Some of you know that a few friends and I started a little magazine (http://empyreome.com) recently. Things have been great, but our site has already been attacked numerous times. About a month ago, someone broke in and injected malicious code into some pages. I was able to detect the attack early, fix the code, and put additional security measures in place to reduce risk in the future. Things have been quiet since then. Until today...

Today, someone launched a combined DOS (denial-of-service)/SQL Injection attack against the site. Fortunately, I was able to thwart the attack(s). Also, I was able (rather easily, I might add) to track down the perpetrator. I was quite shocked to find that it was an author who had submitted a story a few weeks ago and had received a rejection from us this morning.

It goes without saying, but this is not the way to handle rejection. I am now considering legal action against this individual. In addition, I will be emailing every magazine that I know about to alert them to the threat this individual poses. I think this person, however desperate they were to get published, has now sealed their own fate.

If a person offend you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch your chance and hit him with a brick. ~ Mark Twain2015, Q4: R2016: SF, n/a, SHM, SHM2017: SHM, n/a, F

I occasionally hear about something like that and am always astonished. Maybe there should be something like the Darwin awards, for writers who remove themselves from the 'gene pool' of writers through their own stupidity.

Goodness. I mean, I've heard of plenty of authors arguing with rejections, or claiming guidelines don't apply to them, or just being insulting; I've even heard of an author threatening legal action against a magazine for not accepting them (how I'd love to know what grounds they'd predicate that upon); but attempting to hack the site and drag it down? My goodness.

On the bright side, hurrah that you're already so prestigious that authors get this upset over not being included...?

(Also, I'd publicly name and shame on Twitter etc. if I were you. Stuff the crazy fool!)